A new report from the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) has called on the UK government to set clear expectations for electricity firms and other key infrastructure providers to maintain service during extreme events.
The report, titled “Developing resilience standards in UK infrastructure” was created in response to the increased number of extreme weather events caused by climate change having a negative impact on the resilience and stability of key infrastructure, including the UK’s power grid.
While the commission noted that the energy sector already has its own set of resilience standards, which include expected levels of system availability and service recovery times, it was agreed among stakeholders that there is a lack of understanding around the long-term resilience of the system and its ability to reliably meet electricity demand.
The NIC suggests several ways in which resilience could be built into the UK’s energy system, including using the Capacity Market to provide generation at times of system stress and making more use of the Demand Flexibility Service to incentivise consumers to lessen grid demand. Additionally, the commission referred to a recommendation made in its second National Infrastructure Assessment, suggesting that the government develop a strategic energy reserve to provide a long-term store of energy in case of extreme events.
Whatever approaches the energy sector takes to improve resilience, the NIC says that they should meet several tests it has developed; that is, any changes brought in to improve resilience should be measurable, should consider probabilistic scenarios such as wind drought with specified annual probability, should consider the system as a whole, make use of existing measures already in place, and should also be able to be stress tested against a wide range of future energy generation scenarios.
NIC commissioner Professor Jim Hall said: “With billions of pounds due to be spent over the next 20 years on new infrastructure to create a greener, more productive economy, the time is right for government to set out its expectations of operators in the face of growing resilience threats.
“Failing to do so will cost us all more in the long run, as expensive emergency measures have to be introduced to address service failures that could have been avoided by planned investment.
“None of us can expect every service to be 100% reliable in the face of big shocks to the system, but we should at least know what we can reasonably expect from different utilities when extreme events occur. That allows us as individuals—as well as other impacted infrastructure sectors—to plan for different eventualities.”
UK grid resilience
While the UK grid is arguably stronger than many other nations like the US, it is still vulnerable to a wide variety of threats.
In June, the think tank The Alan Turing Institute published a report noting that the UK’s offshore wind farms are extremely vulnerable to cyberattacks. This poses a threat to the security of the energy supply and the potential of a Colonial Pipeline-style ransomware attack. The report notes that offshore wind farms often run on ageing software, which can increase susceptibility to cyberattacks.
Regarding the usual increased demand on the grid network that comes with the winter, National Grid ESO remains optimistic that the network can cope. A report published by the network operator in June says that the British electricity grid is expected to have a de-rated margin of 5.6GW (9.4%), which is higher than last year.
